And the winner is…… Dr. Broccoli!

But there were some amazing submissions, some deserving of what James would call ‘Madd Propz’.

Thanks to everyone who submitted!

Wipe the dust on your Desert Bus wallet!

Silent Auctions will be starting in under an hour and we’ve got 3 excellent prizes up for grabs:

The biggest Big Bag o’ Dice  I have ever seen, which equates to roughly a metric tonne, or ~ 300.

The plush crocheted pig of cuteness.

Astro A40 Black Headset - the headset of champions. Or people who just really like high quality audio while they’re gaming. So pretty much everyone

Auctions, challenges, and giveaways are a long-honoured tradition of Desert Bus for Hope, and a great way to raise money for the kids. Last year we implemented a back-end system for Desert Bus in order to track these events, and to introduce our silent auction system. On the whole, we felt that it worked out very well, but there’s always room for improvement!

This year, we’ve updated this system with some new features both on our end, and on yours. These changes should make our lives easier as we progress through the run, and they’ll allow you to do all kinds of cool new things!

The first thing you need to do is head on over to donor.desertbus.org and register an account. You will be required to register if you want to issue a challenge, or bid on a live or silent auction item. All you need to give us in order to register is an email address, so that we can contact in the event that you win yourself a prize.  Then, using this personal account you can:

• check the status of your challenges,
• track the silent auctions you are bidding on,
• view your donation history,
• pay for accepted challenges and won auction items,
• add shipping information, and
• manage your donor profile.

 
On your homepage you’ll also receive messages if you have any outstanding items, like an auction item that needs a shipping address.

The account registration process is already live and running, so if you plan to make us act out a scene from the musical Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark with every role played by a person doing a lousy impression of Sean Connery, or throw down with Octopimp in order to win a lot of autographed widgets, you may want to get this taken care of right away.  You wouldn’t want to miss out on an auction because you weren’t signed up!

See you Friday!

Update: Please note: you should use the same e-mail address to register a Donor account as you use for your IRC login. Bidbot will only recognize emails it knows! If you used a different address for your IRC login, you can add that address as an “Additional E-mail” in the “Edit Profile” section of the Donor site.

AUCTION NOW LIVE

The Creepy Doll is back! Again! The bad news is: this means that the Desert Bus auction winner of Creepy Doll #31 has mysteriously backed out of the bid, making Tally’s craftsy bunny ears droop with sadness. The GOOD news is: this gives all of you one last chance to own the last of this limited run of terrifyingly adorable dolls.

This is your official stand-up-and-take-notice warning that we will be silent auctioning Creepy Doll #31 next week. Starting at 12am on Monday, Dec. 20 and going until midnight on Thursday, Dec. 23, the Creepy Doll will be up for auction online, with proceeds being donated to Child’s Play (naturally). Watch this blog and the Desert Bus and LoadingReadyRun twitter accounts for further details as to where the bidding will take place.

Keep in mind, this is a very special Creepy Doll. Not only is he the 31st of only 30 numbered dolls, he also comes with all the festive paraphernalia he’s stolen from the other holidays. His hands even have velcro sewn on so he can hold these items. The winner of this auction will receive:

- the 31st Creepy Doll (numbered on the bottom)
- his scythe
- a Valentine’s Day box of chocolates*
- a St. Patrick’s Day 4-leaf clover
- a Thanksgiving drumstick*
- a Christmas Santa hat
- a Halloween pumpkin
- and a special Creepy Doll coffee cup sleeve, so he can stare accusingly as you drink your morning coffee or tea. Do you really need that much honey?

Bonus: Because this is a very special auction, and because she’s been at her incessant crafting again, Tally is going to sweeten the pig… with a pig! Should the bidding for the doll reach $1000, the winner will also receive his or her choice of one of the three plush pigs pictured below, also crafted by Tally, in post-event honour of Desert Bus.

So your instructions are: Read blog, bid on doll, get pig.

Two days out from Desert Bus, and we’re still wrapping up the remainder of the administration. Shipping, inventory, etc. are occupying most of our time, and we’re doing our best to get everything out the door ASAP. Some general housekeeping notes to take care of:

IF YOU WON A PRIZE OR AUCTION AND HAVE NOT SENT US YOUR SHIPPING INFORMATION, YOU NEED TO EMAIL PRIZE@DESERTBUS.ORG RIGHT NOW.

We can’t send a prize to somebody we don’t have an address for, so if you won something and haven’t sent us your address, it’s a pretty good sign that we need to talk to you.

If you have sent in your shipping info, we have your information so keep calm and carry on: there’s no reason to send more email.

IF YOU WON A PRIZE OR AUCTION, WE WILL GET YOUR THINGS TO YOU ASAP

Sadly, we cannot guarantee that anything will get where it needs to be before the holidays, but we’re doing the best we can to get everything out the door over the next few days. After that, it’s up the postal service. Depending on the circumstances, you may receive your items bundled or separately.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CLAIM YOUR DONATION ON YOUR TAXES:

If you live in the US, you can claim your donation to Child’s Play on your taxes. If you live elsewhere in the world, you are welcome to try, though your results may vary, as Child’s Play is a registered charity in the US. Use your PayPal receipt as proof of payment: Child’s Play’s tax identity number is 20-3584556. For more information, please email childsplaycharity@childsplaycharity.org.

IF YOU HAVE SUGGESTIONS FOR NEXT YEAR’S DESERT BUS FOR HOPE:

We would love to hear from you! The large, projected chat and the silent auctions are both are based on suggestions from our viewers, and have been hugely successful. We take your feedback seriously, so if you have a suggestion, please email it to suggestion@desertbus.org.

IF YOU MISS US AND WANT TO SEE MORE FROM US:

Please check out our sketch comedy and game video series at loadingreadyrun.com. We produce new stuff every week, and have a forum frequented by many of your friends from the Desert Bus chat. We’d love to see you there!

Thanks to all of you for watching and participating this year–have a great holiday, and we hope to see you next year!

About 2/3 of the way through Desert Bus, the whole crew was getting pretty tired, and pretty stressed out. We thought some “adult” beverages would the things we needed to soothe our jangled nerves. We put out a call for cocktails and mocktails that captured the spirit of Desert Bus, and here they are:

Alcoholic:

Winner:

Mark’s Deceptive Sunrise

1 part Drambuie

2 parts ginger ale

splash cherry juice

Runners Up:

Katherine’s Sweetness for the Children Cocktail

1/2 oz of Pineapple Juice

1/2 oz Melon Liquior

1/2 oz peach snappes

1/2 oz 7up

Jillian’s  - The Bug Splat

2 parts Midori

1 part Limoncello

1 part gin

Non-Alcoholic:

Winner:

Leigh’s CHOCOLATE BUS

orange juice

chocolate milk

(note – this will curdle, but tastes like drinking a chocolate orange)

Runners Up:

Beth’s Las Vegas Lights (or 1 point) – Non-alcoholic:

1 oz lemon juice

3 oz cranberry juice

1 oz apple juice

1/4-1/2 oz grenadine

Garnish with 2 pieces colourful candy (gummy bears, skittles, etc)

Gareth’s Desert Sunset

Arizona Iced Tea

Orange Juice

(super boring, but therefore very much in flavour for Desert Bus)

I think, in this case, we can all agree that Team Cheese is the clear winner, but let’s have a look at what happens when Ashton and Kroze are forced to go up against it, mono-a-mono-style.

Rosco is a duck of many talents, who has led a long and daring life of adventure. Below is a small sampling of his feats, as illustrated by you, in one of the most impressive collections of art we’ve ever had a challenge produce. Great kudos to the illustrators.

I have been scrambling to catch up with all the art challenges over the last 24-hours: sorry for the delays, but we’ve obviously been very busy . The first challenge of Kathleen’s run was a Top Gear fan art challenge, for which we had a small number of submissions … but a fierce number of submissions, as represented below.

So, when I told Frank at 1Up that game sites had, in the past, donated a box of review games to Desert Bus for auction, I never expected something of this magnitude. If you–like me–grew up reading countless piles of EGM magazines, you probably wondered where all the pre-release copies of games went after they’d been reviewed. Well, if you’re lucky, now they can go to you!

The folks at 1Up have dug into their massive game library to produce this immense auction lot of games from the 1Up and EGM libraries. These are mostly review copies, played by 1Up staff, and are–in many cases–marked as such. Whether you’re an EGM fan looking for a piece of history or a collector looking to bolster your library, be sure to tune in at 4:30 for what should be a pretty insane live auction!

Also, be sure to drop the folks at 1Up a line for some of the best game editorial and podcasts out there!

Complete listing after the break.

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